3. But to forsake the law of God is to forsake God. And here it is stated most emphatically that the people had forsaken God : " They have forsaken me." And in forsaking God they had forsaken the source of all good. They had turned their backs upon the Fountain of God's holiness and grace. Every road was well trodden except the way to the Fountain. All the broad highways led elsewhere, and the holy way was now just a little field-track only rarely frequented, on which walked a mere rem- nant thirstily looking for " the consolation of Israel."
TJ If you never go to church, never have anything to do with a church of any kind, you may think you are not dealing with the great question of religion: but if religion is something of importance to the world, merely by letting it alone you are deal- ing with it, dealing wrongly with it, and it is a serious question whether you have any right to let it alone. What right has any man, when great questions are up, touching the welfare and future of humanity, to stand back merely because he happens to be comfortable, and to let them alone ? You must deal with religion. Letting it alone is dealing with it, and may be dealing with it in the very way in which you have no right. For, mark you, religion is one of the most permanent elements in human life.1
1 M. J. Savage.
JEREMIAH ii. 13 5
I.
Forsaking the Fountain.
What happens when a people forsakes the Fountain of living waters ?
1. First of all, when a nation turns its back upon the Fountain and loses sight of the supreme holiness of God, its fine perception of all sacred things begins to grow dim. This is not a statement of chance. It is the expression of a law which has universal sway. We retain any kind of refined perception only by continual fellowship with the highest of its kind. That is so with literary perception. It is so with exquisite musical discernment. It is so with delicate artistic taste. And so it is with a fine perception of sanctity. To retain our spiritual sensitiveness, it is imperative that we continue to hold fellowship with the Divine. If the fellowship with God is destroyed, the general sense of reverence is impaired.
T| Eeligion, in its ultimate essence, is a sentiment of Eeverence for a Higher than ourselves. Eeverence can attach itself ex- clusively to a person ; it cannot direct itself on what is impersonal. All the sentiments characteristic of religion presuppose a Personal Object, and assert their power only where Manhood is the type of Godhead.1
Tj This is the thing which I know — and which, if you labour faithfully, you shall know also — that in Eeverence is the chief joy and power of life ; — Eeverence, for what is pure and bright in your own youth; for what is true and tried in the age of others; for all that is gracious among the living — great among the dead — and marvellous, in the Powers that cannot die.2
TJ As for Carlyle's religion, it may be said he had none, inasmuch as he expounded no creed and put his name to no confession. This is the pedantry of the schools. He taught us religion, as cold water and fresh air teach us health, by rendering the conditions of disease well-nigh impossible. For more than half a century, with superhuman energy, he struggled to establish the basis of all religions, " reverence and godly fear." " Love not pleasure, love God ; this is the everlasting Yea." 3
1 The Life and Letters of James Martineau, i. 240.
2 Ruskin, Lectures on Art, §65.
* Augustine Birrell, Collected Essays, i. 24.
6 THE FOUNTAIN OF LIVING WATERS
2. The ebbing of reverence specially leaves the family un- hallowed. The sanctity of family relationships finds the flower of its expression in family worship, and among the people of Israel this flower was withering away. They forsook the Fountain, and the family altar was overthrown. Surely we may here pass from ancient Israel directly and immediately to our own time. With what consternation and alarm do we look upon the general overthrow of the family altar. And the ruin is wider than is apparent in the lapse of common family devotion. For instance, is any one prepared to maintain that the fine reverence of children for their parents is a conspicuous feature of our modern life? There is a thinness in the relationship and an irreverence in the ordinary speech which do not conduce to the health and strength of our family communion.
Tf Fine reverence is not synonymous with restraint, nor does its practice induce anything like staleness and dull reserve. Noble reverence is rather the essential secret of an exhilarant and healthy freedom. I, for one, would welcome back into our modern life the fine, stately courtesy with which children honoured their parents in generations past; that high-born, fine-fibred, healthy grace which had such splendid expression in the days of old. But I do not know how such a reverence is to be recovered, or how it is to be kept alive and maintained in true and exquisite sensitiveness, unless there is a family altar in the home, and the corporate life of the family is centred in the reverent worship of Almighty God.1